Tatemae, Honne
by ScarlettWoman710
Summary: A part of him doesn't want to want her. He's psychotic and no good for her, he's absolutely certain, not to mention the fact that her heart still beats while his is just for show. He tries to ignore her, at first. But Violet Harmon won't be ignored.


**Title:** Tatemae, Honne

**Author:** ScarlettWoman710

**Summary:** A part of him doesn't want to want her. He's psychotic and no good for her, he's absolutely certain, not to mention the fact that her heart still beats while his is just for show. He tries to ignore her, at first. But Violet Harmon won't be ignored.

**Spoilers/Warning/Triggers:** Spoilers: Season 1 up through Rubberman. Warnings: Cutting, violence, overdose, murder, heavy smut.

**Author Notes: **This was written for the AHS exchange for the amazing, talented, and wonderful **TheDevotchka. **This is a "partial" AU. Essentially, the show is canon with two exceptions - I've removed the two parts of the series people disliked most - Tate never raped Vivien, and Hayden never came to California, causing things to progress differently (i.e, there's no Travis, and both Harmon's live.). Many thanks to Jandy for betaing this for me. Finally, in regards to the title: _tatemae_ and _honne_ are two Japanese words. _Tatemae_ is the facade we display to the world, what we say or do because it is expected of us or because it is the "right" thing, and _honne_ is our true, secret, desires - what we really want when we're hiding behind our _tatemae_. Also, this fic won a couple of awards over at the AHS exchange - _Favorite Smut _and _Favorite Violate Moment._

* * *

Tate Langdon's been dead almost as long as he was alive, but even with all that time to contemplate the differences between a living hell and the permanent, afterlife version he honestly couldn't tell you which of the two he prefers. Living was a nightmare, no doubt about it, but being stuck in the house he hated more than anything is probably worse. When he had made his plans to go down in a blaze of glory and haze of bullets he thought that he'd be headed for fire, brimstone, every biblical nightmare his mother had painted on his drawing room walls. Instead, he woke up on the basement. Sure, it was better than the flames of hell, but there are times (when the monotony got to be too much) that he wishes things had been different.

He's watched people come and go in his seventeen years - his mother and the cocksucker, families that managed to make it out alive but scarred in ways that you couldn't see with the naked eye, those that hadn't managed to make it out alive.

He knows he should feel bad for those poor souls that were trapped, like him, but he couldn't. Hell, he's even done his part to keep two of them here. The house has a way of making you do the worst things you could think of, and Tate's always had a knack for thinking of very, very naughty things.

At least now, in this "life," he's not the only one.

So all in all, he supposes it's not the worst place in the world. He can't leave. Big deal. He hates the world outside the house's walls, hates every fucking miserable soul he hadn't been able to save. If he's stuck on this plane of existence, unable to cross over, he'd choose stay in the house forever any day over being outside of it.

99% of the time, Tate's feelings on being stuck in the house hover near detached resentment, but today, Tate's emotional state is a whirlwind of anger and anxiety. A new family is coming to see the house. This always upsets Nora, whos incessant sobs echoed down the halls last night when he was trying to sleep. Lorainne had lit him on fire when he refused to play tea party with the girls that morning. Shortly after, Elizabeth followed him from to room to room asking him to listen to an audition piece for a play that hadn't been performed in sixty years. Moira, eager to knock the cobwebs off her sex-kitten persona, paraded around in her tiny uniform making his dick inflate like a balloon, and then turned into a sixty-old woman in a blink. It was blue-balling at it's finest, made only worse by the fact that Tate hadn't gotten laid in a very, very long time.

So Tate's in a pretty sour mood when the realtor turns up on the doorstep to wait for the new family. He contemplates staying to watch the them in love with the place, as they all inevitably did, but then decides he has no desire to watch another fucking bunch of yuppies make their way through the house and jizz in their pants over the goddamn Tiffany light fixtures.

He's absentmindedly rolling Beau's ball back and forth between his knees when the door to the basement creaks open. He stifles a groan and leans against the cold cement wall to wait for little Miss Suzie homemaker or Ward Cleaver to wander into his midst. Wonderful. What could they possibly want down here? His lips curve into a small smile. Sex dungeon. The place would be perfect for it. They could hang the whips and chains right next to the fetus heads and pigs floating on bat wings in jugs of formaldehyde.

When he finally looks up to see who had come to investigate the darkest, dreariest corner of the Murder House, he sucks in a breath and feels his heart start pounding in his chest.

It's a girl, not much younger than him. Slim. Slight, really, height barely cracking five feet. Pale skin wrapped in layers and layers of clothes in varying shades of gray, white, and mustard yellow.

She's fucking beautiful. Perfect in every way that counts.

It's not the first time Tate's seen a pretty girl, obviously - there's Moira to look at in the house, not to mention the multitudes of stereotypical "beautiful" California girls he'd seen at his school when he was alive, leggy size zero platinum blonde bimbos trussed up in layers of whatever passed for haute couture of the whores. He'd never taken any notice of them at all, up until the moment they wandered in front of the reticle of his shotgun.

It's not even the first time since he's been dead that a live female has crossed his path. He's seen other girls since his heart stopped beating. There was even another teenager girl that lived in the house once, in between the Cocksucker's reign and the brief tenure of the homos. Tate hadn't bothered much with her, either. While she wasn't as vapid as the girls at his school, her "personality" was largely limited to hours with her nose buried deep in her chemistry set, mixing compounds and making minor explosions. If she had been at least interested in a little pharmaceutical chemistry, then maybe he would have bothered to show himself if only for the chance to get high again and escape the monotony of the house. But no, she was trying to save the world, trying to cure cancer or some shit.

The world doesn't need saving. The world needs destroying. Tate knows that better than anybody. So once it was clear that this girl would be of no use to him, he stopped watching her, save for the handful of moments she'd fuck herself between the sheets.

He's still a teenager, after all. Perhaps somebody should send the memo that he's dead to his dick.

All that shit - girls from his high school, the live girl that used to live in the house, the dead girls that still live in the house - means nothing to him. No one had ever turned his head (well, not the one resting on his shoulders). But this girl, this particular girl, is different.

He follows her up the stairs and tries to figure out exactly why she's so appealing to him. Maybe it's the ugly yellow cardigan, so similar to the ones he favors. Maybe it's the beautiful face, the soft curve of her tiny breasts, the gentle slope of her hips. Maybe it's the ballsy way she tells the realtor that they'll take the house, tiny smirk playing on her lips. Or maybe it's the way she mutters "Go fuck yourself" under her breath to her father when he isn't paying attention.

It could be any of those things, or all of them. Whatever the reason, Violet Harmon's already got him by the balls.

He watches them leave, Violet walking backwards to the car as she stares up at her new home, and he smiles.

No matter the outcome, this family will at least be more interesting than the last.

He turns to climb the stairs, swinging back and forth on the banister before taking the first step, singing quietly under his breath.

"_Here we are now... entertain us_."

* * *

A part of him doesn't want to want her. He's psychotic and no good for her, he's absolutely certain, not to mention the fact that her heart still beats while his is just for show. He tries to ignore her, at first. But Violet Harmon won't be ignored, and besides, suppressing his baser wants and desires has never been his strong suit.

She's even more gorgeous than Tate thought. He shamelessly watches her shower, desperate to see what all those baggy sweaters and grandma length skirts are hiding. She's even better than in his fantasies - milky white skin, rosy pink nipples, and an ass that he's aching to sink his teeth into. He's starting to think he's going to jerk his dick raw. He knows it makes him a pervert but he honestly doesn't give a fuck, not when the girl of his dreams is standing in a steamy shower carefully running a razor over her pubic bone to shave herself bare.

It's not just her body that he's falling in love with, it's her mind. She's smart. She reads a lot. She burns through books at a ferocious pace, Vonnegut and some author he's never heard of - Palahniuk - earning the prestigious honor of sharing her bedside table. She's kind. She loves her mother and her father, though she's not afraid to call them on their bullshit. She's got a good heart.

There's a darkness to her though, a swash of black through the innocent white of her soul. She cuts her skin just to watch herself bleed, a serene smile on her face as drops of blood hit the porcelain of the sink. She's full of rage that she's only willing to let escape through the inch wide cuts on her forearm. When he sees her slice into her flesh, he's overcome with a desperate need to show himself. He'll offer her his corpse like it's a bouquet of flowers, she can make him bloom rose red with a few slices of her razor and he'll happily let her. All she'll have to do is ask.

He'd do anything for her already, and she doesn't even know he exists.

Sometimes Tate thinks that she's like him, a ghost from another era, by the heavy rotation of Nirvana and Hole blaring from the set of speakers on her dresser.

Or maybe she's just a Courtney looking for her Kurt.

He could be her Kurt.

* * *

A weeks worth of obsessively watching her gets to be too much, finally, and he seriously considers slitting her throat to make her a permanent resident.

Instead, he calls in a favor.

He goes outside to the backyard and meanders over to the fence. He can hear his mother puttering around in the garden, pots tinkling against one another as she hums along with a radio.

"Constance," he calls over the splintered wood that separates the lawns.

In an instant, her wrinkled face is peering back at him. "Yes, my boy?" she asks. She reaches for his face and, though her touch makes him sick, he lets her stroke his cheek. He needs her, after all.

"I'm messed up," he admits in the most pathetic voice he can muster. "Mama, I don't want to be like this anymore." He pulls a face that he hopes is contrite enough to convince the Cocksucker that the words he's saying are the truth.

"Oh, _Tate_," she breathes. "Tate, you tell mama what she can do to help. My perfect, precious boy."

He keeps his face steady even though inside, he's grinning in triumph. "Mama, I need you to schedule an appointment for me with Doctor Harmon."

* * *

Tate has no interest in having his head shrunk. He's fucked up, he knows, but he likes being that way. In truth, he doesn't get why no one else can see what he does - the world is a filthy fucking place, and the only way to fix it is to wash it clean in the blood of the mindless drones that walk in the streets.

Needless to say, he doesn't take his appointments with Violet's father seriously. They're a means to an end - an excuse to be seen in the house, to make himself known, so that he can talk to the good doctor's "fierce little girl."

She's fierce, but not in the way Ben thinks. She's fierce because she refuses to be defined and won't allow herself to be controlled. She's fierce because she rides her fingers under her comforter like she's got something to prove.

Tate's desperate to know what that something is, and the only way he can find out is by actually talking to her and getting her to admit it. So he sits through his sessions with Doctor Harmon and feeds him fantasies that are actually closer to his former reality while he plots ways to make nice with the doctor's daughter.

After his first session, he spies her slicing into her own arm. He tosses her a line about proper suicide technique and she orders him to get out - but not before the corners of her lips quirk up into a smile. She's intrigued, he knows, and he couldn't be happier.

He has his mother call and suggest thrice a week sessions. Best to strike while the iron is hot and all that.

He watches her creep down the stairs to listen in on his second session. He does his best to give her a good show, feeding Ben lines that he knows will piss him off and trying to make Violet laugh. He must have succeeded, because after his "therapy" is over, she invites him up to her room.

They compare scars and histories as the stereo blares music more from his high school years than hers. They talk for an hour before Tate finally has the courage to ask a question he already knows the answer to, thanks to countless hours of invisible stalking.

"So, you single?" he asks casually, eyes devouring her greedily.

"Oh... yeah," she says, her cheeks flushing red. "I mean, I just moved here."

"Yeah, but did you have someone back in Boston?" He's not sure why he needs her to admit it so badly, but he does. He wants to hear her say he doesn't have to share the girl he's already thinking of as _his_ with anybody else.

She shrugs. "Nah. I dated a guy for a little while, but it didn't work out."

He nods and tries to keep his face impassive, though a repeated mantra of "You're mine" is thrumming through his brain. "How long were you together?"

Her mouth puckers into a frown. "I don't know, I didn't really care enough to count weeks or whatever."

He grins, relieved that the boy from her history doesn't matter enough to her to have the answer memorized. "Don't most girls usually keep track of that kind of shit?"

She gives him a slow smile and he's hard, instantly, because it isn't the fake toothy grin she keeps plastered to her face when her parents are around. It's shy and genuine, and it's for him.

Just him.

"I'm not like most girls," she admits, ducking her chin and avoiding his eyes.

He already knows. It's what he loves most about her.

"Good," he says firmly, reaching out to stroke the skin on the back of her hand. "I don't like normal girls, anyway."

* * *

He spends the next month "sneaking in" to see her. He's surprised at how often she lets him.

They talk about a lot of things - music, movies, books and poetry. They argue about favorites and symbolism sometimes but never with much venom. It's all elaborate foreplay, they both know it, but while things have been rumbling along for a few weeks they've yet to turn over.

Until tonight.

Tonight as they lie on her bed, listening to The Smiths and The Velvet Underground, she doesn't jerk her hand away when the back of his palm presses against hers. Tonight, she nudges back, and then, after drawing in a sharp breath, laces her fingers with his.

He can't help but grin. Ballsy. He likes that.

And the least he can do is make the next move.

He rolls over her, blanketing her lithe body with his, and captures her mouth in a kiss that has even his atheist heart believing in a higher truth.

They're breathing hard between caresses, lips fighting for dominance, and he's trying to think of everything and anything asexual so that the feel of her nipples straining against her thin t-shirt and pressing into his skin doesn't make him blow in his pants.

"Fuck, _Violet_," he growls, lifting his pelvis to try and make his hard-on a little less obvious.

She grins and wraps her legs around his, pinning him to her, little heels digging into the back of his calves. He groans and she slips a hand under his shirt. "Don't move," she whispers against his lips. "I wanna feel you."

And fuck, does he want to feel her.

Her hip bones rub against his, sharp odd angles and he can feel the heat of her cunt through the billion layers she's buried under. He lets his arm trip down her side, skimming the swell of her breast before fluttering to the waistband of her leggings.

"Can I?" he groans, praying that she'll say yes.

She doesn't answer, unable to speak, just nods her head with her eyes squeezed shut.

He's dreamed of the way she would feel but the silk of her panties is better than any and every fantasy. He slides his hand below the material and shudders when his fingers make contact with skin, shaved smooth and slick with want.

"Oh, Jesus," he shudders. Her eyes unshutter briefly but before she can lose her nerve he's got two fingers pumping lazily inside her as he gently rubs her clit with his thumb.

Her moan could kill him, if he wasn't already dead. He can suddenly understand why Helen of Troy could start an entire Parisian war, he'd fight one of his own if anyone tried to take her away from him. God knows he's killed for a lot less. It's a breathy sound, it tumbles free of her lips and it's accompanied by her back arching softy and hips rocking into his hand.

"Does it feel good?" he asks. He wants to hear her voice. He needs to hear her calling for him.

And like she can read his fucking mind, she nods and whispers his name.

"Tate..."

He leans forward and nibbles her neck, sucking purple bites into her pale flesh, marking her as his own.

"Tate... fuck, I... _Tate_..."

He pumps faster, wiggling his thumb against the swollen bundle of nerves, the apex of heaven. With his free hand, he lifts her shirt so that he can mouth hungrily at her perfect breasts through the flimsy cotton of her bra.

"Tate, I'm gunna... _fuck_, Tate please... _please_."

The second he can feel her fluttering around her he bites the swell of her breast, nearly hard enough to pierce the skin. He has a feeling Violet would like it if he makes it hurt, just a little.

He's right.

She comes violently, hands flying up to tug his hair and hips shaking in furious jerks that mimic the clench of her cunt around his fingers.

He's doesn't stop until he feels her go limp, and when she's done he slides his fingers through his lips to deliberately suck them clean. She watches, but doesn't blush. Her eyes lift halfway and her mouth falls open and, at lightning speed, she flits up to sit across from him, thighs spread over his and ankles hooked around his ass.

"Violet, what the fuck?"

"It's your turn," she says mischievously, fingers flying over the buttons of his jeans. She pulls his cock free of his boxers and he's already hard but if he wasn't the hungry look in her eyes that appears the second she surveys his length, already weeping at the head, would be enough to get him there.

"You don't have to," he says half-heartedly, but he doesn't mean it. She knows that he's not serious, he can tell by the way she rolls her eyes.

She leans forward to kiss him, her hand wrapped around his dick. "Shut the fuck up," she whispers against his lips. He can feel her smile into the kiss, it makes his dick twitch and he pulls away to slow his breathing and calm himself the fuck down because this is about to be over way faster than he wants.

She licks a stripe into her palm, and it's so over the top erotic and obscene that he's panting like a dog before she even makes contact. Her hand drifts down lazily before her fingers wrap around him, moving in slow, even strokes. It feels in-fucking-credible but it's not just having someone else jerking him off for once. It's the feel of her thighs rubbing against his, her mouth teasing his neck, her teeth nibbling at his skin.

"Violet," he grunts, and he's so fucking close. "I'm gunna..."

She never fails to surprise him, now is no exception, and he thinks he's going to die when she slides her hips back and ducks forward to wrap her lips around the head of his cock.

"_Violet_," he hisses, and cums so hard he almost passes out.

She releases him with an audible pop and sits up, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

"God, Vi," he pants. "You didn't have to do that."

"I wanted to," she says firmly. She tucks him back into his boxers and slides forward to sit in his lap, her head resting against his chest. "I'm tired," she yawns, nuzzling into his flannel.

He wiggles back to rest against her pillows, wrapping an arm around her waist, the other tangling in her hair.

"You're fucking incredible," he murmurs against her head.

She does nothing but purr happily in response, a gentle sound from the back of her throat. It sounds happy. Content.

He'd feel the same way if it weren't for one thing.

It's a small thing. A barely noticeable emotion, but the only one that could touch him in this moment.

He's wondering where she learned to do that, to make a boy feel like _that_.

And more importantly, he's wondering how he's going to keep her from doing it for anyone else, ever again.

Just then he feels her breathing deepen and even and having her trust him so entirely that she's sleeping in his arms after his fingers have been inside her is enough to temper his jealousy.

For now.

* * *

Everything between them is perfect. Beautiful, in fact, for a few months. Ben and Vivien are less than eager to let Violet out to explore L.A., and Violet is content to lie in her bed, reading, talking, and listening to music with Tate, which saves him the awkward conversation as to why he can't ever take her to the movies. He thinks he knows why. It's the house. It wants her, just like it wanted him, just like it wanted Chad and Patrick. And you can't help but try and give the house what it wants.

He's starting to think that they'll live happily ever after until she comes home one day with a backpack full of college brochures.

"What are these?" he asks distastefully, lifting a glossy catalogue on one long finger and dropping it onto the floor.

She rolls her eyes at him. "College applications and shit," she says, shoving them off the bed to join the one Tate had discarded a moment earlier. "Apparently I'm like, really behind."

His brow creases. "You're thinking about college?" he asks. What about him?

"Of course," she says, and playfully pokes him in the gut. "And _you_ should be too. Hell, maybe we can go together."

She doesn't know. She doesn't know that he's dead. She doesn't know that he won't be going _anywhere._

_"_I don't want to go to fucking college," he sneers, using rage to mask the fact that he does want to go to college. Really fucking badly, in fact. The thought of leaving the house and spending hours fucking her in a dorm room in between keeping fingers intertwined as they sit in the back of classrooms, discussing authors and poets with other people that actually _give _a shit actually sounds pretty fucking incredible.

She frowns at him. "What are you talking about?" she asks, brow raised. "What the fuck are you going to do then, bum around at the beach? Waste your life?"

He eases himself off the bed. She's going to leave. She's going to fucking leave him and go to college. She'll forget about him and fuck around with other guys and do that _amazing_ thing she figured out how to do with her tongue last week.

"Fuck you," he spits, lashing out because if he doesn't he'll cry. "Don't be a bitch."

"Well, you're acting like a dick!" she exclaims, sitting up. "Jesus, what the fuck is your problem?"

"Nothing," he growls, pushing his hair out of his eyes. Nothing he could say to her, anyway. "I just... I've gotta go, okay?

"Tate, what the hell?" she says, moving quickly from anger to hurt at his potential abandonment, her voice nearly breaking. "What is going on?"

"I've gotta go," he repeats again, and has to fight the urge to vanish in front of her eyes. He crosses the room in three quick steps, leaving and slamming the door behind him - but not before he sees two tears making their way down her cheeks.

* * *

It takes him a few hours, but then he calms down. When he does, he's so sorry it nearly makes him feel sick.

He finds her in the gazebo her father built in the back yard, knees hugged to her chest as she breathes out little puffs of air that spiral out of her perfect little mouth and into the evening mist.

He knows he should apologize but he doesn't know how. Finding his own words has never been his thing, he's always done better borrowing the words of some long dead author that said it better. He disappears from the yard and digs through her books, than his in the attic, trying to find the right thing to say. After he's pitched the last book in the box labeled "Tate" in his mother's scrawl across the room, his eyes fall on something bulging out of the blanket it's wrapped in in the corner.

His guitar.

He forgot he had it. Fuck, it was the nineties, everybody knew how to play the guitar. You picked one up and learned how to play a few songs by either Nirvana or Dave Matthews Band, whichever was your pleasure, in the hopes that it could get you laid. Hippie bullshit wasn't his style, so he'd figured out the chords to a handful of his Kurt Cobain favorites plus a handful of songs the cocksucker bribed him to learn, paying him twenties that he quickly traded for powder that disappeared up his nose.

He's in front of the guitar and pulling it loose from the blanket in a blink, disappearing from the attic and reappearing in the backyard in another. She doesn't turn around, but she must know he's there. He can tell by the set of her shoulders.

He rests his foot on a rock so he can use his knee for support and starts strumming. Gently, quietly at first, getting louder as his confidence grows at the rediscovered skill. He wasn't sure what song he was going to sing until he was out there, gazing at the curve of her neck, stark white against a purple dress, her head resting on her knees.

_I know you belong to somebody new  
__But tonight, you belong to me  
__Although we're apart, you're part of my heart  
__And tonight you belong to me_

It's an old tune, he knows. Before her time. Before his too, come to think of it. His mother used to serenade his father on Sundays, long fingers flying over the ivory keys on the piano in what is now Ben's office. He doesn't croon the song the way his mother used to, however. He slows the tempo, making it headier, bluesier. He pours every ounce of want he has into those four little words - you belong to me.

He hasn't played the guitar or sung since he was living and he's amazed that he can remember how. Maybe the memory was waiting for him.

No. Her. Maybe it was waiting for her.

_I know by the dawn that you will be gone  
__But tonight, you belong to me._

Once he finishes she doesn't move from her perch, just sighs, a low, agonized sound. "Come sit with me," she says quietly, acknowledging his presence at last.

He lays his guitar on the ground and drags his feet over to her, sliding along the bench to press his body against hers. "I'm sorry," he mumbles, staring at his feet.

"Yeah, I know," she sighs, leaning her head on his shoulder. "You were acting like a real asshole though, you know that?"

He nods. "I know."

"Don't do it again," she says, eyes finding his. "I'm serious. I want to be with you, Tate, but not if you're going to be like this."

"I won't," he promises, and hopes he can keep it.

She sighs again and heaves herself off of the bench. "Come on. Let me sneak you upstairs. I've got to go to bed, I've got a long day tomorrow."

He laces his fingers between hers. "Doing what?" he asks, not really caring about the answer, too happy that she's given him forgiveness that he knows he doesn't deserve.

She shrugs. "I've got some stupid project to do," she says in an offhand voice. "Luckily, my teacher said I can work on it in the library during class."

For a moment he freezes, then relaxes. The evidence of his crimes would have been cleaned up long ago. Floors repaired, bloodstains scrubbed out. She'll never know.

Hand in hand, they walk back into the house.

* * *

Something's not right.

Every day at 3:15, Tate climbs out the attic window to assume his perch on the roof to watch for Violet to arrive home from school. Every day by 3:25, Violet rounds the corner - utterly distinguishable by her purple leggings or unfashionable boater hats - and makes her way towards home.

He counts the minutes and watches the sky fade from brilliant blue to a more muted pink. It has to be close to five, maybe later. She's _never _this late. His anger is only tempered by the knowledge that he's got no justifiable reason to be angry (it's not like she knew he'd be waiting) and the panic that something could really, truly be wrong. Anything could have happened to her. Car accidents, pedophiles abducting pretty little young things like her, rapists, murderers. Monsters like him roam the streets. He feels nauseous.

And when he finally sees her, he almost wished his fears were true. They're better than the alternative.

Because she's not alone.

The boy walking her home is tall. As they get closer, Tate picks out more features. He's hispanic. He's got a skateboard in his hand (_poser,_ Tate snorts) and a canvas backpack thrown over his shoulder. He and Violet are chatting animatedly, and a calm, carefree smile lights her face.

He's actually standing, ready to jump from the roof to land in the lawn and beat the shit out of the asshole that has the nerve to talk to _his _girl, when he realizes that all he'd succeed in doing is shattering his brains over the pavement and freaking Violet the fuck out. He materializes on the lawn instead, invisible, waiting for a moment to make his move.

"I still can't believe that shit happened here_," _Violet says, a crease forming in her brow.

"It did," the guy insists. "You can look it up, if you want. I think there are pictures of the dead kids online."

Tate's stomach turns, panic once again overtaking him. It sounds a lot like they were talking about a skeleton from his closet he'd rather leave hidden.

"It's pretty fucked up," she muses, hand catching the gate to tug it open.

"Yeah," the kid agrees. "And they didn't even tear the library down after. So that whole time we were working on that project, you could have been sitting where somebody _died._"

And as much as he's freaking out, he snorts again. Forget studying where somebody died. Violet was now unknowingly fucking a corpse in the spot that he took his last breath on a nightly, and sometimes hourly, basis.

She rolls her eyes. "Crazy," she comments, but there's no real interest in her voice. He can see the pull that the house has on her, even now, as she steps away from her study partner and through the gate. "I'll see you tomorrow, Gabe," she says, waving without looking at him.

"I could come in," he hints hopefully. "We could get it done now, if you want."

"Nah, I've got other shit to work on," she says, and despite his turmoil relief washes over him in a crisp waves. He resists the urge to follow the kid and reach through the gate to strangle him and instead invisibly follows Violet into the house.

She's still unsettled by her conversation with Gabe, he can tell. She calls out token responses to her parents as they leave to pick up dinner and goes to hide in her room, flicking her laptop to life with a soft hum. He's seen the machine, fucked around with it a bit while she wasn't home, but had no real interest. He watches as she slowly, deliberately, types in "Westfield High School Massacre" into a tiny box on the screen.

Fuck.

_Fuck._

He's screaming but she can't hear him. For one very real moment he nearly rips the computer from her hands and throws it across the room, but that would only freak her out even more.

He's poked around on the internet but doesn't really know how it works. He's got no idea what's even out there. So he waits, and he prays to a god that he doesn't believe in that his secrets stay buried, for just a little longer.

She clicks through link after link, looking at pictures of victims he doesn't even remember killing, but eventually she finds it. A link catches her attention, no doubt due to the name "Tate Langdon" in the headline.

Her hands are shaking. So are his.

She might as well find out. She's going to find out eventually anyway.

Her finger moves over the mouse. She waits.

His picture floods the screen, dates of birth and death under the headline.

And she screams.

She screams, and screams, and screams until she passes out.

When she wakes, he's there, one hand smoothing her hair away from her face.

"Are you scared now?"

* * *

Violet's been spending a lot of time alone in her bedroom. He's been doing his part, staying away as far as she's concerned but really spending every moment she's home invisibly by her side.

Her father, flawless psychologist that he is, has no idea that his daughter has completely and totally lost her shit. She looks hollow, sunken cheeks and eyes. She's not sleeping very much. Every night, she flips her laptop open to stare at his picture, and then she cries. She never whimpers, never makes so much as a sound, just lies there silently as tears cascade down her cheeks.

He's ruined her.

And as sick as it is, he's not sad. Because this girl, this girl that he fucked up, probably isn't going to go to college and leave him. This girl can barely get out of bed.

He decides that he's going to reach out to her. He doesn't want her to think he's disappeared. He'd _never _leave her. He's hers, for always.

While she's at school one day, he carefully writes "I love you" on her chalkboard and then pulls up a chair to wait for her to come home.

When she does, and she sees the message, she breaks completely.

She's digging furiously through her bag for something and, before he can stop her, she's opened a little orange bottle and dumped half the contents down her throat.

In an instant, he's standing by her side. He knows he needs to make her throw up but he can't just appear, not now, not when she's in this delicate state. She'll pass out in a minute. She's already tired, climbing into her bed and curling herself into a little ball.

He watches her breathing slow as her sobs ease. And as he does, he can't help but think.

She could die.

She could die, and then she'll be with him, forever. No college. No Ben and Vivien to decide on a whim to move her across the country. She'd stay in the house, untouched by time, young and beautiful and in love forever.

She's quiet now, but she's still breathing.

If she died in the house, there'd never be another boy to compete for her attention. She'd never grow up, grow old, get married, have babies. He didn't even know if she wanted that shit but if she did, he'll make it up to her. He'll love her and protect her and every time she gets too sad about the life that she lost, he'll lick her between her thighs until she forgets anything but him.

Him.

Always, and only, him.

Her eyes flutter closed. Her breath is shallow.

He can make her so happy. If she wants a kid, there's Lorraine's kids and if she prefers a less charbroiled version he'll wait until some yuppie family moved in with their rugrats and smother one of them while they're sleeping. He can give her anything she needs. He'll take care of her because she's _his. _And in the end, that's what makes up his mind.

He lets her die.

"You're _mine_," he says quietly, gazing down at her lifeless corpse.

Now she is, for real. Forever.

* * *

They're lying intertwined, arms wrapped around one another. "This is so fucking weird," she murmurs, hands tangling in his curls. "I can't believe I'm dead. I feel so fucking _alive_."

'I know," he says seriously, pulling her tighter. "You get used to it, though."

She gazes at him. "And you were dead, this whole time," she marvels. "This is fucking insane."

"I'm sorry," he says. But he doesn't mean it. "I should have told you, but..."

"I wouldn't have believed you if you did," she says. "I loved you, Tate. I _love _you. I just wish I wouldn't have..." her voice trails off as unshed tears fill her eyes.

He dips his head to kiss her rather than look at her. "I wish I could have stopped you," he lies, pressing his lips into the soft, white skin of her neck. "I should have come up from the basement to check on you when I heard you come home..."

"It's not your fault, Tate," she says sadly. "I was fucked up before."

"I just wanted to protect you," he whispers. "I couldn't do it."

She cups his cheek in her hand. "You can protect me now," she says softly.

He can. He will.

He holds her until she falls asleep.

* * *

Days bleed into weeks. It's the closest to heaven he's ever come to, living in this happily ever after with Violet. Her parents' naturally neglectful nature means they've yet to realize their daughter should be six feet under, though the flies from her corpse are starting to become an issue.

He's told her everything about the house. He's pointed out the other ghosts (she freaked out when she found out Moira was not among the living, and even more when she saw the twenty-year old sexpot version) and let her in on the basic rules - leading her to the property line so she could snap back inside the house like a rubber band. He's told her about Halloween, taught her how to vanish from one room and appear in another, and after the nurses scared the shit out of her while she was in the shower, he taught her how to make the other ghosts go away.

The hours they weren't engaged in Murder House 101 or hiding from her parents while she was supposed to be at school were spent naked, sweaty, bodies wrapped around each other so tightly you couldn't see where one ended and the other began.

It's like a dream.

Dreams don't last forever, though. Eventually you have to wake up.

* * *

He's seen Violet chatting with Chad before. They both like wine, sarcasm, and cigarettes, so it's not too far fetched a pairing. It's just polite conversation, nothing to be concerned over. Or so Tate thought.

He finds out just how wrong he is when he wakes from a nap to see her, standing at the end of the bed, eyes boring holes into him.

"Hey," he says uncertainly, sitting up.

She says nothing, just stares at him.

"Are you okay?" he asks as he slides forward, moving to rest his hand on top of hers. She jerks it away.

"I thought... I mean, I knew you were fucked up," she says slowly. "You killed kids. Innocent ones."

He bites his lip. "I know," he admits. "I was different then, though. You changed me, Violet."

"I knew that you killed fifteen people, and it bothered me, but not as much as it should. Because I loved you, you know?"

He feels his heart pounding in his chest. "Loved?" he asks.

She ignores him. "Chad just told me. He told me that you killed him and Patrick."

It hurts him as if she'd physically punched him, a body blow. "Violet, I -"

"And you watched me die."

He sucks in a breath. How could she know? "What? I didn't, I was in-"

"Don't lie to me!" she explodes, picking up the bowl that houses her doll heads and heaving it across the room, glass splintering across the wall and floor. "Chad saw you. He _saw_ you in my room, _waiting _for me. He _saw_ you fucking _watch me die!"_

He blinks the tears filling his eyes away Lie. He needs to lie, needs to pretend he's something he's not, needs to do anything to convince her to stay. "Violet, I thought you were napping, I swear. Please, Violet, you have to believe -"

"You watched me take the pills. What the fuck did you think, I needed thirty of them to get to sleep?"

Shit. He's losing her. He switches tactics at lightning speed. "I thought you _wanted_ to die. You knew I was dead, so I just thought..."

"You could have saved me, Tate," she says, her voice breaking as she says it but with the same strong set to her eyes. "I could have lived. You could have stopped me. Fuck, you could have left me alone and I never would have gotten so fucked up in the first place!"

That undos the weak grip on his sanity he was keeping. The floodgates open, and all of his psychosis spills out. For the first time, Violet Harmon sees the real Tate Langdon as he towers above her.

"You're _mine!_" he roars, grabbing the sides of her arms and shaking her. "I couldn't just ignore you, you _belong to me!"_

Maybe it's the house, or her death, or how free the truth has made her, but she's not afraid of him. She doesn't so much as wince as he jerks her back and forth like a ragdoll, his eyes crazed. "I love you," she whispers once he finally stills her. "But I can't be with you, Tate. You lied to me. You didn't try to protect me. You wanted me dead. You wanted me stuck here with you."

"I did," he admits, choking back a sob. "But it was because I _love _you, Violet. I love you so fucking much. Please listen, I -"

She holds up a hand to stop him. "Go away, Tate," she says slowly. Deliberately. Making sure the blow lands and sticks.

He panics. "What? Violet, please, don't do this!"

"GO AWAY!" She screams.

When he opens his eyes, he's in the basement.

"Violet," he sobs, but she's not there to hear him.

He's alone.

* * *

He hasn't seen her for months.

A carefully constructed letter she left for her parents to find (coupled with missing belongings she's squirreled away to one of the houses many hiding places) has them convinced that she's run away. They're a mess - in spite of their shitty parenting, they really do love their daughter - and when their private detective turns up no leads they decide to go back to Boston in the hopes that they can find her there. The house languishes on the market, fully furnished in the hopes of enticing a buyer.

He searches the house high and low for her, desperate to see her, to explain, but she never appears. When he's not frantically disappearing from one room and reappearing in another in the hopes that he catch her unaware, he sits in his rocking chair in the basement and thinks. He goes over it again and again in his mind, flipping through a hundred scenarios and lines he can feed her and personalities he can slip into to make her change her mind. He _will_ get her back. She'll be his again.

Every now and then he sits in her room and plays the part of the broken little boy (which he is, in truth, though he's pretending to be a different kind of broken - his cracked soul is more likely to slit her throat to tie her corpse to a chair and force her to stay) and calls her name, begging her to return.

It does no good.

* * *

It's two years before he smells her again. There's a new family living in the house, finally, and she had taken advantage of the power and hot water to take a shower.

He searches for her frantically, but she's already gone.

* * *

It's another year before she speaks to him.

He's lying in a bed in their old room, dreaming about her, and suddenly, she's there.

"Violet," he whispers. He tries to scramble into a seated position but she's faster, reaching out to slash him with her razor blade.

She doesn't quite split his neck, but he's losing a shitload of blood. He tries to speak, mouthing words without sound as she stares at him.

"Shut up," she barks, eyes wild. "I've only got a minute before you die, and I want you to listen to me."

He closes his mouth and tries to force his pupils to focus, not wanting to waste a precious second of gazing at her now that she's finally in front of him.

"You as good as killed me," she spits. "You made me love you, made me go so crazy that I killed myself, and you watched me fucking do it. So now I'm going to kill you, everyday, and I'm going to watch _you_ die. I'm gonna do it until the whole world finally destroys itself and I can move the fuck on and get a little peace."

He opens his mouth, blood bubbles gurgling out and down his chest.

"Don't talk," she says, voice breaking into a sob. "I hate you. I fucking hate you, Tate."

He can't help but think that her anguished profession of hate sounds awfully similar to how her desperate I love yous did.

He closes his eyes and dies, her voice echoing in his head, her face frozen behind his eyelids.

* * *

The house has broken her.

_He_ has broken her.

And he's still not sorry. Not sorry for killing her, and certainly not sorry for turning her into a monster, because now she's like him. Crazy, fucked up, full on miserable.

Which means that she'll want him back, eventually, because if there's one thing that misery loves, it's company. Tate knows that better than anybody.

The days go by, turning into years. She stabs him, she burns him, she suffocates him while he sleeps.

And he lets her, because he's so desperate to be close to her.

He wonders if she's killing him for the same reason.

* * *

He's in the their room, a guest room now, sitting on the edge of the bed. Jeans in a tangle around his ankles and hand wrapped around his dick, other hand fisted around the only pair of Violet's panties that he's managed to steal, the velvet dark of his eyelids fades away and he's envisioning her in perfect clarity. He remembers the way she'd jerk her hips when she got close to cumming and how she'd never ask him to go down on her but instead would provoke him into a bout of mock wrestling until she was sitting on his sternum and he'd lift her up and slide the rest of the way down to lick every inch between her thighs. He remembers the way he could make her sex clench around his dick when he'd growl in her ear, "_Mine. You're mine."_

He's about to cum when a noise jerks him out of his reverie and makes him lose focus. His eyes drift open to find Violet in a leather chair across from him, shirt slung over the chair back and skirt bunched up around her waist. Her legs are flung wide, knees hooking over the arms of the chair, the black silk of her panties in sharp contrast to the stark white of the ankle they're dangling around. Her eyes hungrily devour his hand as it flies over his cock, her own fingers circling carefully over her pink, glistening clit.

"Don't stop," she breathes.

He doesn't. But now he keeps his eyes open, the scene in front of him better than any fantasy.

The whole set-up is a pleasant surprise, but he's far from shocked at this new turn of events. He always considered her daily murders some kind of foreplay, knives plunging into flesh in perfect phallic symbolism, her little hands wrapped around his throat as their own brand of BDSM.

They cum within seconds of each other. Her ankle shakes violently as her hips rock back and forth in the chair, he spurts hot and sticky into his hand as he watches her ride every second of her high on lazily pumping fingers.

And before he can catch his breath she's jabbing a letter opener from the downstairs study into his jugular, her naked breasts swaying as she leans over him to watch the life leave his eyes.

Once he wakes, he's surprised to find her panties abandoned on the floor, the crotch still slick and warm.

He crumples them in his pocket to add to his collection.

* * *

Roughly seven years to the day that she died, she climbs the attic stairs to find him.

His heart leaps into his throat, as it always does when he sees her, and he rolls over on his side. "Ready to kill me?" he asks, resigned. He remembers how once he wanted to offer her his corpse to let her bleed him dry. Now he's been given the chance. He'd never deny her anything, not even this.

But she surprises him. "No," she says quietly, unbuttoning her shirt and letting it fall off her shoulders. She's bare underneath, pink nipples pointing at him, as desperate for his attention as he is to give it to her.

His dick springs instantly to life, his heart pounding in his chest in relief that the moment he'd been waiting for since their mutual masturbation session had finally come. Even though he knows exactly what's going to happen next, he plays the part, letting her hints and cues mold him like clay, letting her feel like she's the one in control. He forces his expression into something befitting of confusion and asks "Violet, what -?"

"I'm so fucking lonely," she says, wiggling out of her skirt. "I still hate you, but I miss you, too. And I finally figured out that fucking you doesn't mean I forgive you."

No, he thinks. It doesn't. But it does mean you will.

She pushes her panties down over her hips slowly, putting on a show and revealing the plump pink skin between her legs, the shine of want already dampening her thighs. When she steps out of the puddle of her clothes on the floor and she's naked before him, she's so beautiful that he wants to cry.

"Don't talk," she cautions, dropping to her knees and crawling on top of him. "I'll kill you if you talk. Let me have this. Please."

"Anything," he whispers as she leans close. "You can have anything."

And he doesn't say another word.

They work together to peel his clothes off, hands flying over buttons and tugging shirts over shoulders and jeans over boxers until he's naked below her. He's desperate to voice his love for her but he keeps his promise, using his lips to lave at her breasts instead of talk. He gets his teeth around a pointed nipple and she rewards him with a soft, breathy moan before pushing him down on his back so she can line up their bodies and sink over him.

And here, wrapped in the tight, warm embrace of her body, he's whole.

She moves softly and slowly at first, rocking gently above him. His hands grip her hips to hold her steady, tethering her to him. As their bodies move together like the tide he can feel her coming back to him, slowly, walls breaking and falling apart as she lets her hands wrap around his biceps, fingernails piercing the skin. She starts to move faster and, in a momentary loss of control, she leans forward to kiss him.

He nips at her lower lip and grips her hips tight enough to bruise. She breaks the kiss and breathes his name, barely a whisper. It's nearly enough to push him over the edge and he slips his hand between them to gently stroke her, urging her forward. Her heels dig into the sides of his thighs and he speeds his pace, rolling his hips up to meet her every stroke as his fingers massage her clit in tiny circles.

He can feel her fluttering around his cock and he lets his hand slide from her waist and up her back, folding her over him so her cheekbone rests against his. He whispers it so softly that they could both pretend he said nothing at all, but he knows by the clench of her cunt around him that she heard the low, hissed _"Mine," _against the curve of her ear.

He follows her over the edge and bites his lip hard enough to bleed to hold in the "I love you" on the edge of his lips.

He waits for her to spring up and slit his throat, but neither the pain from an inflicted injury nor her withdrawl from him comes. Instead, she lies there, sweat pooling between their chests, and lets her heart slow and her breathing even. Gently, not wanting to frighten her away, he wraps his arms around her. He hasn't felt this whole in years, not since she went away.

Basking in his contentment, he falls asleep.

* * *

When he wakes she's still there, dressed and smoking a cigarette, his forgotten guitar on the floor between them.

"I found this," she says, nudging his guitar forward with her foot. "It was in a box of your old shit."

He sits up and nods. He's both surprised and grateful that she's still here. "Yeah," he croaks cautiously. "My mom left some of my stuff here for me. She obviously didn't know me at all, or she would have tossed the guitar and left the baggie of coke and meth I had stashed in the drawer."

She looks down at floor but it doesn't hide the small smile lighting her features. She reaches her hand out and nudges the guitar forward again. "Come on," she says softly. "Play it for me."

Obligingly, he picks it up and nestles it into his lap. "What do you want me to play?" he asks, gently strumming the strings.

She exhales a cloud of smoke at him. "You know," she says, her face falling into his favorite mean little smirk.

He smiles. Of course. The only song that he'd ever played for her. The only song that made sense, for the two of them. The one that said everything about the way he felt about her then and the way he feels about her now.

_I know with the dawn  
__That you will be gone  
__But tonight, you belong to me  
__Tonight, you belong to me_

When he looks up to find her after strumming the final notes, she's already gone. He smiles and lays back on the floor, staring at the dust motes spinning above his head.

Progress. It's progress. She'll come back to him, eventually. It's only a matter of time.


End file.
